246 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Harrisse does not claim infallibility, and when he draws deductions from 

 these data his reasoning may or may not be conclusive to those who are 

 conversant with another order of facts, but the student may implicitly 

 depend upon the accuracy of the extracts, and reason for himself as con- 

 fidently as if the documents quoted from were spread out before him in 

 his own study. Now, if my readers will turn to page 94 of Mr. Harrisse's 

 last book, " John Cabot," they will find a flood of light thrown upon the 

 Cabot map of 1544 by the reproduction of a map by Desliens, made in 

 1541, three years previously. They will find by a comparison of these 

 two maps there placed face to face, that the Cabot map was compiled 

 from the same materials as the Desliens map, and that these materials 

 were none other than Jacques Cartier's. Mr. ITarrisse has completely 

 demonstrated the main propositions laid down by Mr. Ganong and 

 accepted by Mr. Joseph Pope and Bishop Howley. I do not think that 

 the conclusions of these writers on Cartier's course will ever be shaken, 

 excepting in some relatively unimportant details. 



It is not my intention to go over Cartier's course. I merely wish to 

 dwell upon what Cartier discovered between the undisputed points. Cape 

 St. John (Cape Anguille) and Cap d'Espérance (Miscou Point). What 

 he found there is on Desliens's map and is equall}^ on Cabot's map. There 

 is absolutely no other alternative ; either the Cabot map is, as regards 

 the gulf and river St. Lawrence, copied from Desliens, or both are copied 

 from one prototype— to wit, the charts made under Cartier's own super- 

 vision. In that fact is an absolutely unanswerable proof, on Sebastian 

 Cabot's own authority, that neither he nor his father ever passed through 

 Cabot strait or entered the gulf. Every name but one is Cartier's, and 

 that one is changed from the prototype, as Desliens's map witnesses and 

 as Cartier's narrative establishes. 



If we take now Appendix 2 of Mr. Ganong's paper (E. S. C. Trans. 

 1889) we shall find all the places mentioned by Cartier in order from 

 Cape St. John. They are Isles de Margaulx, Ille de Brion ; nobody dis- 

 putes these to be the Bird Eocks and Bryon island. Then he came to 

 Cape Dauphin, a goodl}^ cape on a land " laquelle semble estre comme 

 " une isle environnée d'islettes de sable noir." Cartier could not land 

 because of the wind, but he coasted along this land for about ten leagues, 

 and Ave learn that it lay west southwest. 



I would now ask the reader to consider the following description of 

 this land from Cartier's narrative in Hakluyt. He sailed ten leagues 

 until " we came to a cape of redde land, that is all craggie, within the 

 " which there is a bracke looking toward the north. It is a very low 

 " country. There is also between the sea and a certaine poole, a plaine 

 ** field ; and from that cape of land and the poole unto another cape 

 " there are about 14 leagues. The land is fashioned as it were halfe a 

 " circle, all compassed about with sand like a ditch, over which as farre 

 " as one's eye can stretch, there is nothing but marrish grounds and 

 ^" standing pooles. x\.nd before you come to the first cape, very neere the 

 " maine land, there are two little Hands. About five leagues from the 

 " second cape towards the southwest there is another iland very high and 

 " pointed which we named Alezai. The first cape we named St. Peter'a 

 " cape, because upon that day we came thither." 



A more graphic description of the Gi"eat Magdalen island could 

 hardly be written, and I would ask the reader to compare the map of 

 the island and the description from the Admiralty Sailing Directions.. 



